What's your favourite photoshop trick?

[shuttertalk]

I think photoshop quite daunting with the endless possibilities open to the user. What's your favourite "trick" or technique that you do that gives your images the custom flare? Are you just a automatic levels and adjustments person, or do you have something special up your sleeve?

[alastair_hm]

I mostly use it to adjust the levels of an image and add a frame or resize for upload to DA.

One trick I like its to duplicate the background, do the adjustments on the copy and blend it back into the original using the layer's opacity settings.
I find it give you more control.

[byrt_001]

i have a few...some into actions

1 my favorite: open an image, duplicate, filter, gussian blur, around 2%, overlay, and opacity. play around with the %.

[EnglishBob]

Mostly do a levels (not automatic), add some saturation.

My favorite "trick" is an action that automatically sizes for online, adds a signature and drop shadow frame.

[NT73]

Oooh so many. I find a new one every month. But my version is V1. can't do a lot of things CR2 can.
Automatic anything usually kills the shot.

[Toad]

My favorite trick is to fade any effects that I apply to a photo back to 15-30%. I often apply multiple effects, but the impact of any individual one is so subtle that they are *almost* undetectable. Generally leaves people guessing about my post processing techniques.

[Irma]

I really don't have any favorite trick in photoshop, as I am learning something I put it into practice, see what pictures are good for that technique, and go to look for the next technique to practice. I work too much with masks, too.

[matthew]

My favourite trick is for photos with blue skies, and works as a virtual polarizer. Select only the sky and feather the selection no more than 1 or 2 pixels. The selection works to mask off the rest of the photograph when a new adjustment layer is created. So, create a brightness/contrast layer, and adjust the brightness down and push the contrast up. This darkens the blues without losing the highlights. Experiment with different values to get an effect that is as realistic or dramatic as you like.

[shuttertalk]

Awesome tips everyone... I really have to try these out.

Any more?

[NT73]

Matthew..What size image do you start with,, as feathering needs to be adjusted to the size of the pixel count.
i.e. if you have a pic of 3500 pixels wide and say feather 10 pixels and then go to a 600 pixel wide picture and use the same feathering it kinda looks a lot different. Your marching ants dont follow anything, sometimes they just walk in a little circle.

[Keith Alan]

To clarify Toad's trick, immediately after making an adjustment, be it levels or unsharp mask or a filter or whatever, go to edit>fade (what you just did) and you'll get a 0-100% slider.
It's often easier (and faster) to do this than to spend time tweaking the settings on the filter or whatever else you were using.

[NT73]

I am sure I got this link from Shuttertalk but there are little favourites all over.

http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut026.htm

[smarti77]

Its the simple stuff that I love like making sure the horizon is perfectly level...I use the measure ruler and rotate arbitary...

[matthew]

NT73 Wrote:Matthew..What size image do you start with,, as feathering needs to be adjusted to the size of the pixel count.

Good point -- I always work on the full-sized image, which for me is about 2500x2000. (Less if I've cropped, naturally.) If the feathering is too great, it will noticeably darken the edges of any buildings or trees. The feathering needs to be very light, just to even out the selection a bit. Since I'm often working with buildings, I also need the corners to remain square.

[NT73]

smarti77 Wrote:Its the simple stuff that I love like making sure the horizon is perfectly level...I use the measure ruler and rotate arbitary...

That's where I am beat, I don't have the ruler, so I minimise the window, and drag the horizon down to the bottom.
The blue band acts as the ruler. If its not straight, then back button and change the rotation angle.

[Toad]

NT73 Wrote:

smarti77 Wrote:Its the simple stuff that I love like making sure the horizon is perfectly level...I use the measure ruler and rotate arbitary...

That's where I am beat, I don't have the ruler, so I minimise the window, and drag the horizon down to the bottom.
The blue band acts as the ruler. If its not straight, then back button and change the rotation angle.

What do you use as a processing tool, Samrti? If you use PhotoShop, I can walk you through it.

[Drewhound]

This can work well or be a waste of time though it's worth trying as it's so quick. I often find I have to expose for the sky so the foreground is really dark. I shoot raw images and convert for thw sky and then for the foreground, having done that I drag the light image onto the dark one. Nothing unusual so far

Now press Shift>Control>Alt># and you'll get a selection which you remove by pressing <backspace>, delete the selection. You'll either have a pretty good image to work on from here or something really terrible.

[Irma]

When I have problems with lanscapes like this what I try to do (and I just started reciently) is to meadure my sky, meadure the foreground, and take it manual. The idea is not to have under or over exposed places. Then in PS work one layer adjustment curves most of the time to get detail in the sky, and another one to get detail and light in the foreground. Mask my layers with gradient tool so I get the best of each layer in the place I want it.
This works also when you want to have a filter effect in the sky, but you blend your layer to color or any other option that suits you and reduce opacity.

[Drewhound]

Irma, that's the I usually do it but the way I've described can give excellent results .............. or rubbish!